


Tech Of Nondestructive Yakking

by WabiSabi



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: AI!Tony, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Sokovia Accords, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Dimension Travel, Families of Choice, Family Feels, Gen, Parent Tony Stark, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Protective Tony Stark, Tony Stark Feels, Tony-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-01-25 16:04:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21358942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WabiSabi/pseuds/WabiSabi
Summary: Endgame. Tony dies.Right?(or where Tony wakes up as an AI in a world without the Infinity Stones, where he died before even being born. Things seem to be nearly perfect here and Tony copes, after all, he only has to endure this place for one year before being plugged out. Literally.Then May Parker dies.)
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Tony Stark & Avengers Team
Comments: 53
Kudos: 217





	1. Hit 'enter' to start program

A violent, overburdening avalanche of information is how his second life greets him. Hella 'hi' in his opinion.

It is, to put it mildly, disorienting.

And it makes him feel a bit like being kicked out from an isolation chamber right in the middle of New Years’ Time Square the instant the ball goes down completely. Shocks of electricity pass in jagged patterns through his brain and instantly turns into images and sounds and data and Tony would have flinched in agony if it were physically possible – but he finds that it isn't.

It is not even necessary.

The nanosecond of disorientation passes in an instant and all at once everything begins to fit beautifully inside his head, like whole encyclopedias being shelved in color-tagged categories but at the speed of sound. Data and images are filtered, analyzed, stored or discarded just as fast as they appear in front of him, and an absurd amount of information appears and settles inside his mind as if it were nothing.

**-downloading of files: 45% ...**

**-ongoing communications ministration. Room 2A6B. Scanning for appropriate tasks. No tasks required; Room 2A6C. Scanning for appropriate tasks. No tasks required; Room 2A6D-**

**-running calculation for experiment 998837BFG. Calculation completed. Reviewing data-**

**-compiling media reviews of AvengersPublicSokovia: 58 % positive, 26 % negative, 11 % neutral, 5% discarded due to inconsistencies-**

**-Accessing files: C:\Council Meeting Schedule\Wakanda\Contract Negotiations\July22th, 2015 9:00 am. Scheduling notification to N. Fury, A. Hawley, F. Yen-**

**-business spreadsheets completed without difficulty. StarkIndustries sales numbers being processed-**

**-reviewing data: security feed, threats, locations. No threats identified. Perimeter secure. Avengers Initiative inactive. Conclusion: party can continue.**

Tony tries to breathe. Can´t. Tries to blink. Can´t. _What is going on?_

**Warning: processing power being overloaded. Recommendation: employ backup processors.**

**Warning: processing error.**

**Warning: An unidentified problem has occurred in the system.**

**Accessing file: C:\Unit Data\Creation\Identity.cnf.; Opening [Identity.cnf]; Unit Identification: T.O.N.Y. (Tech of Non-destructive Yakking)**

_What?_

_What- what is this?_

**Search: Anthony Stark, Tony Stark. Online results: 67.700,100 results for Stark, 480,222 results for Anthony Stark, 210.3 39 results for Tony Stark. Personal files results: 3.008.478 results for Stark, 1 result for Anthony Stark, 0 results for Tony Stark.**

**Opening result for Anthony Stark. C:\Unit Data\Creation\History\AnthonyStark.1st; Opening [AnthonyStark.1st].**

The information seems to flow into his brain. Osmosis absorption, almost. Tony read _nothing_, had _no _time to process the information. One second he didn't know and in the next nanosecond he knows- _everything_, a 200-page file that he processes in a thousandth of a nanosecond.

What he learns:

  * Anthony Stark died before he was even born inside Maria Stark's womb in a car accident on January 9th, 1970, which also killed her.
  * Howard Stark survived.
  * Howard Stark created the Maria Stark Foundation, the world's largest charity group, in honor of his deceased wife. And he developed the first self-conscious Artificial Intelligence, which he named T.O.N.Y. (Tech of Non-destructive Yakking) in honor of his unborn child, which he uploaded to SHIELD´s systems on September 22th, 1991.
  * Howard Stark died on September 23th, 1991, in a car accident.

The conclusion is formed as a row of numbers that automatically translates: T.O.N.Y. is not his name but an acronym of his real name.

His label.

The subsequent conclusion comes quickly then: Anthony Stark does not exist in this world.

Because it is no more than a machine created in honor of a dead fetus.

**Warning: system overload. Danger of malfunction. Shutting down non-essential tasks, redirecting all available processors.**

“-oah! What happened? Everything turned off.”

"Blackout?"

“In the Mansion? That's impossible, we have backup generators _for _our backup generators.”

… Clint? Cap?

“Perhaps we are under some attack? Retaliation from our last mission-”

Thor.

“Someone cut the power."

Bruce.

_Why is everyone-_

"Tony."

_Natasha._

**Reloading system.**

Suddenly Tony can _see._ From a thousand angles. From a thousand directions. From the ceiling, the floor, the TV and the cell phones, the coffee machine, and the refrigerator, in normal vision and night vision and infrared vision, he can see the whole house as one and all its rooms at once. Miscellaneous sounds come to him and are filtered, sorted. Temperature. Humidity. Smell- **acceptable oxygen levels. Toxins or poisons not identified. **A house. No, mansion? Compound. Like the Avengers Compound but _uglier,_ with nothing of its design of liquid cement and bullet-proof glass panels carefully balanced with sharp lines and modern architecture, no metallic _A _decorating the front door. This is but a block of burnt cement with a skeleton of metal, made only to be resistant and practical. Offensively simple furniture, arranged with the artistic sense of a dentist.

Tony finds that he can stay in a number of places at the same time, even as he suddenly turns his attention to the second-floor main hall – **SHIELD's celebration party, 43 guests. **To the woman standing behind the bar counter, dressed casually and as a regular civilian, fiery hair falling to her shoulders with no yellow highlights in sight.

_[there was no 'she didn't make it’]_

_[there was no need for it]_

It seems like an eternity passes until Tony finds out how speaking works here, without a mouth, without a tongue, without a body. He stumbles in search of the right channels, a sense of despair coursing through veins that he doesn't have.

Less than a second later he finds it.

"Nat." It doesn't sound breathless, but maybe just because Tony doesn't have the ability to lose his breath here.

Natasha doesn't physically react, but Tony sees something subtly tense on the woman's shoulders. “Is everything alright?” She asks calmly.

"I..." People react at his hesitation and his focus fragments on them as well.

Bruce in human form, carefully pushing his glasses up his nose;

Steve with his back straight and attentive eyes slightly narrowed;

Thor sprawled on the couch before leaning forward;

Clint approaching Natasha, looking almost oblivious to the act;

He notices Nicky Fury in a corner, Maria Hill by his side. _Coulson... _gets up from where he was sitting with a group of people, all shouting 'SHIELD agents'. Because that is what they are. This- all the data going through his head confirms – is a SHIELD celebration party for the Avengers' second successful mission. In Sokovia.

In search of Loki's scepter.

**Search: date. Result: 19 of March of 2015.**

_Shit._

"Tony?"

"Yes, cap?"

It's automatic. Tony is distracted by the meltdown inside his non-brain. He only thinks about 'addressing protocols' when he sees Steve giving Natasha a look and the warning flashing 'ADDRESSING PROTOCOLS' pops up, rolling 2.3 terabytes of data over his mind like a tape being fast-forwarded (and somehow, he still can understand every line of it). Less than a nanosecond later, Tony understands his mistake:

**File:/Captain Steven Grant Rogers:/Recording [05/27/2012 23:23, Helicarrier, Captain Rogers's bedroom.]**

**-make a wish, captain**

**-wha- Tony?**

**-it´s eleven eleven, you gotta make a wish. It´s the law**

**-[laugh] really?**

**-yep, it was included in the Federal Constitution back in 2002, the Congressmen were not very happy, but it was the people´s wish. Democracy and all that. Terrible idea**

**-[laugh]**

**-c´mon, the clock is ticking, don´t make me call the feds on captain america, it´d only make me look bad**

**-Okay, okay, uh, one wish?**

**-yes, just one, don't get greedy**

**-okay, I got one**

**-let´s hear it**

**-I wish, uh, for you to call me Steve, not captain**

**-… that´s a terrible wish**

**-[laugh] hey, it's my wish**

**-Fine. Still terrible but fine. Hey, do you want me to pull up your movie list? I might have done some very urgent upgrades to it.**

**-… yeah, thanks, Tony**

**-no probs, Steve.**

**Warning: Unit Designation Captain Steven Grant Rogers doesn´t like being reminded of his rank outside work, use Informal Addressing: Steve [permission granted by Unit Designation Steven Grant Rogers].**

“I mean- Steve. What´s up? "

"Is everything alright?" A little frown appears between the blond eyebrows, more concern than wariness although the latter is still present. Tony can guess why, as a pioneer of artificial intelligence. Blame pop culture but while most of the time people are delighted to have an AI around managing their lives, the second they start showing some problems everyone immediately thinks of Skynet and The Terminator. Thus, people being kind freaked out by him, a supposed AI, malfunctioning is to be expected.

What´s surprising though is that Steve is apparently part of this ' _people’._ Here, wherever this is. Or whenever.

By 2019, setting untreated PTSD and depression aside, Steve always accepted any and all types of technology more advanced than a radio with a brief blink of amazement, followed by quick and dismissive adaptation. Maybe it´s because he didn´t grow up on a healthy diet of sci-fi movies with a very apocalyptic view of the future, and at some point the pop culture references just jumbled into a single thing inside his head that he didn´t feel the need to integrate in his daily life as most modern people did – which resulted in him lacking that 21st century fear of a world dominated by robots that thought the planet was better off without humans.

**Warning: acting in any kind of activity aimed at world domination is banned, doing it will active protocol 'Skynet´s Creators Should Have Thought of This’.**

… See?

“I'm fine, just having some issues with my RAM memory,” Tony says. And only after is surprised at the lack of warnings because while that wasn't exactly a lie, it wasn't the truth either. _I´m allowed to lie here?_

Baffling enough, this _relaxes _the people on the party and Tony sees many hands casually retreating from inside jackets and other places fit to hide a gun. But while the flicker of wariness disappears in general, the worry between Steve's eyebrows reflect many others. Fury sighs letting his head hang down a little, hands on hips, while Maria Hill frown at the tablet Coulson pulls out to her. A little shifting of nets and Tony can also see what they are seeing.

Lines and lines of codes, scrolling infinitely between millions of files and subfiles. Something strikes inside him, pulling at a painful cord - it´s far from the same, but the sheer size and complexity of the programming reminds him of JARVIS at his earlier stages and Tony doesn't have to think to realize what he’s seeing.

Tony wonders if this is what the scientist who first saw a DNA string felt.

“Can we have the lights back, man?” Clint asks and Tony realizes everything is still turned off.

"Yeah, sorry - just a sec." It does not take a second but to Tony and his new super mind surely feels like a few minutes. Like a kid fumbling with his presentation cards in front of the teachers. He runs through the connections the fastest he can, switching from net to net before glancing over the map of everything under his control.

Apparently-… everything.

_Wow, this is so not good for my controlling tendencies._

“Any problems in the SHIELD´S systems?” Nicky asks, after glancing at the tablet Coulson and Maria offered him.

“Nope, everything is running smoothly. The glitch was local, no worries,” It’s easier to lie when he can control the modulation of his own voice. He sounds perfectly calm and unbothered and people seem to believe in him without a second thought, as the party runs back to its course. He flicks the sound back on, randomly selecting a playlist under Natasha´s account while setting the lights into a more relaxing atmosphere, warming the floor enough to fight the cooling of the air conditioning.

-

At the same time, he opens a silent, hidden file, and fills it with a high-pitched, white noise with no words.

It's the closest thing to screaming he apparently can get here.

-

In Coulson´s tablet there were a lot of things, going from interesting to disturbing and funny (apparently 'virtual collector cards' is something that exists). Tony has access to everything, including private files, because Coulson, just as carelessly as people giving permission for an app to manage phone functions without thinking about the consequences, gave him permission years ago and never revoked them.

The same goes for Fury's electronic devices. For Maria´s. Steve´s, Bruce´s, Clint´s, Natasha´s, any agent of SHIELD, with the only exception being Thor, who does not have his own electronic device to grant Tony access to.

The same is true for every Stark Phone-owning person, which accounts for about 87% of America's population and 66% of the world's population – 100% of all who have electronic devices with Internet access, seeing as Tony has unlimited, uncontrolled access to it. Not just the cute, civil internet of Google and email and YouTube, but sites with no connections to web searches engines and NASA, JAXA, Pentagon, The Raft, WATSON, Chine and North Korea's blocked internet and Russia and the closed processors of the Space Station and Probes currently in operation.

Tony has access to the whole world and a few light-years through the solar system.

And what he finds out is: he is obsolete.

His processing power, his data transmission rate is almost... _ancient_. FRIDAY in its early stages was 66.3% more potent. Karen was 95.4%. EDITH? 300% more. Even JARVIS in his latest version in 2015 probably had more power than he does now. Unrestricted internet access _it´s_ his saving grace because the keyword is '_unrestricted'. _The kind that even _Tony _never gave to any of his AI, in the sense that even EDITH and FRIDAY required some kind of verbal command to justify accessing the internet. But in Tony´s case- T.O.N.Y.´s, he finds that the protocols that would guarantee some kind of control are... non-existent.

The only thing that could possibly prevent him from taking over the internet is the _'Skynet's Creators Should Have Thought of This'_ protocols, which prohibit Tony from engaging in things that could be interpreted as world domination. And even these, Tony finds out after an inspection, aren't exactly bulletproof. He could see Howard giving this kind of crazy power to his creation, especially the Howard from his memories of 1990 who spent most of his time at the bottom of a whiskey bottle. But Howard here died in 1991 after relinquishing TONY's command to the next SHIELD director. Why then in recent years no one has ever looked at the super artificial intelligence and it´s uncontrolled internet access, especially nobody from _SHIELD,_ and thought 'maybe that's not a good idea'?

The answer is simple, and he finds it in the file about his creation: because Howard Stark was not a director of SHIELD for nothing. And paranoia is a road of no return.

Howard created T.O.N.Y. in that strange mix of sentimentality and aggressive practicality that Tony has already seen in his own projects: the AI, as the fundamental basis of its primary function, is a tailor-made aid tool for SHIELD, and its command is passed on from director to director. However, contrary to what would be expected from the machine set up to help the non-governmental organization, T.O.N.Y.´s primary physical body (mainframe, hard drives, processors, etc.) is located _underneath _the Stark Mansion where Howard and Maria lived before they died. Only a _secondary _one stays in SHIELD 's headquarters.

And the main one is hidden in a sealed room with 60 inches vibranium walls, armed to trigger self-preservation protocols if any forced entrance is detected – making him dump himself on the internet while starting a self-destruction program. And to get into that room, or even the _Stark Mansion_, it takes codes that Howard has historically only given Chester Phillips, Edwin Jarvis, and Peggy Carter.

Chester died before Howard, and Edwin here was apparently no different from the version of his world, at least in his discretion and loyalty. In this case, the only living person with the codes to enter the Stark Mansion and interests that could match SHIELD’s, is Peggy Carter.

Who, at this point in time, is already in advanced stages of earlier dementia.

-

So, in reality, no one can access T.O.N.Y. main body.

Which brings the reason why no one has ever tried to change anything about his programming since his creation. Or why, in plain 2015, Tony feels like he's in the 2000s in terms of processing power in so many ways – because in a way he still is. While T.O.N.Y. can handle any upgrades/maintenance that it needs on its systems itself, it depends on actual humans to help maintain the physical part, which is the only reason why Howard even gave the codes to other people in the first place. However, with his premature death and Peggy disease flaring in 2005, no one had been able to do it for the last decade since apparently his protocols prevent him from telling anyone not authorized by Howard himself the access codes.

The secondary mainframe on SHIELD is updated and taken care of and it compensated for the absence of upgrades in its main body. Until the point it didn´t.

This brings him to the year 2015 and the reason why no one seemed suspicious of his lie about issues of memory: because, at this point, it isn´t. T.O.N.Y. 's lack of physical upgrades apparently started to be a real issue around the begin of the year, and when it became clear it was not something they could fix from outside, SHIELD decided to start the shutdown of T.O.N.Y.

**-downloading of archives: 45.63% ...**

Which means Tony has around… judging by the speed of data transference…

Less than a year before being plugged out. Literally.

-

Tony-… copes, for lack of better word. It's probably not what any therapist worthy of their certificate would call a _healthy _coping mechanism, but the good news is that Tony of today, in the most literal sense, has nothing to call healthy. He has no body or hormones or a brain to snap and break because he should be dead, but he is not, and somehow the world is completely wrong.

Or right.

He does not know how to categorize.

He went back in time somehow, within a different reality. The notion of such a thing should be impossible to contemplate, and it would be if Tony couldn´t still invoke the feeling of the Infinity Stones burning his cells and the power to do whatever he wanted literally at his fingertips – and perhaps that is the root of all this. Tony changed reality with a snap of his fingers and everyone assumed that the consequence would be to die.

Well, he doesn't think _this _would have crossed anyone's mind except as a joke.

_My life is a joke._ Maybe it should have passed his.

It's easy to be a Super Artificial Intelligence in a way that being an Organic Super Genius never was. For instance, he doesn´t have a biological body that requires time-consuming maintenance, such as _sleeping _and _going to the bathroom_ and _eating_. He _needs _constant maintenance, but here he has the ability to divide his attention into a thousand different portions, delegate tasks that don´t interest him to another part of himself and turn his main attention to whatever he wants. Tony can and _does_ what he needs at the same time of what he wants, without either side suffering the disadvantage of his lack of time and will.

Tony has achieved what he has been trying to accomplish since he was 4 years old: functional multitasking.

He doesn't even have the disadvantage of fatigue, of burning himself out. He was made to work 24 hours a day and not care.

Therefore, Tony runs SHIELD and the Avengers and Stark Industries and the life of the 2,000 agents and their families under SHIELD's employment, at the same time he tries not to fall apart. The hidden file continues to grow, the high-pitched white noise fluctuating accordingly to his mood _but constant_, and Tony doesn't have eyes to claw out or fist to punch a wall until he breaks something. He can't even _cry._ He wonders if that's what paralyzed people feel, at mercy of their own body, even if in Tony's case it's the lack of one the problem.

People would call him crazy for missing the ability to just inflict pain in himself. It has been years since he had such self-destructive urgencies but the thing is there's no way to distract himself here, it's impossible, his new shiny, metallic mind makes sure of it.

He´s running almost half the world and still has the spare brainpower to dwell in the fact that _here,_ Anthony Stark doesn´t exist and Virginia Potts is a secretary in some no-name company and fiancé of two years to a college teacher

and Morgan Stark doesn´t and won´t ever exist.

-

**-Security Level SS, File: /,,,: / ------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- -----------------]**

-

The major differences in this place are, as Tony manages to find out, the following:

-As soon as it was uploaded in SHIELD´s systems, T.O.N.Y. rooted out the virtual ghost of Zola and exposed the infiltrated HYDRA, that was then successfully arrested and contained for the most part. Not in time to stop Winter Soldier from being deployed, however.

-A few cells survived and are still being hunted down. 

-Project PEGASUS never happened. 

-SHIELD, therefore, was never disbanded. 

-The Winter Soldier program was discovered almost two decades earlier and its failed experiments found in their cryogenic sleep locked into a place that would be called the Raft after a few years. With the exception of one Sergeant James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes who, at the time of Zola's discovery, had been awake from his cryogenic stasis for the assassination of Howard Stark. He escaped prison and disappeared.

-Steve was found with only his shield and five nuclear bombs – normal, _earthly _nuclear bombs. No Tesseract (no records of it ever existing). 

-Loki still happened but the Helicarrier was never destroyed, Coulson was never 'fake-killed', for a single god apparently can't do as much damage as fifty SHIELD agents plus Barton. Here, his scepter had been an amplifier of his natural powers, not brainwashing. No Mind Stone. 

-Steve doesn't know about Bucky. 

-Jane Foster´s incident in London with the Aether never happened. Instead, as the Convergence concluded, a mild alien invasion of the species identified as 'Dark Elves' occurred, successfully contained by Thor and a group of Asgardians. There´s no record of the Reality Stone. 

-He searches carefully. There are very few records of the woman known as Ancient One, while there are lots about one Dr. Stephen Strange, famous neurosurgeon in New York. None shows any connection between the two but while this is not alarming since Strange´s accident has yet to happen, it´s alarming that none of the pictures and information about the Ancient One depicts a certain eye collar with a glowing green rock inside. 

Tony doesn't know how to feel about any of that.

-

He researches about this world in the first 24 hours here, sees something more or less like his own and departments to researching the lives of everyone – Bruce, Natasha, Steve, Barton, Nicky, Maria…

They are all the same except the ones who aren't.

He finds Pepper as the secretary of a minor fashion company, still struggling against the preconceptions forced upon her due to her past career as a model but living a normal, regular, _safe _life; Rhodey is walking around on his own two feet as a major from the air forces, a golden ring in his finger from a marriage with a college sweetheart Tony doesn´t remember ever existing; Happy still works as a security guard in the same mall Tony recalls meeting him, the same unsuccessful career as a boxer bittering the man to the point he carries the same nickname.

May Parker has one Peter Parker under her wing and finished burying her husband of 12 years one month and a half ago, who had been picking up his nephew from school when he had the misfortune of attracting the attention of a robber with a too-nervous-finger in the trigger.

Peter, who is, by all accounts, a perfectly normal 14-year-old kid.

He locks surveillance in all of them, hacking his way into Peter and Happy too low-grade phones from another brand without hesitation when he finds out they don't own StarkPhones, and upping in the paranoia with street and internal cameras from the places they usually frequent when the stupid phones showed to be less than what he considers to be acceptable. Pepper and Rhodey´s StarkPhones are barely cutting. Technology is _appealing _late here (to his, admittedly, a little bit excessive standers) and while he had stopped indulging in his own ego some years ago, he has to wonder if that is really the cause.

Stark Company here is much like Apple back in his world. A creation without its creator, being managed by a board that doesn't really understand what they are selling beyond what they _must _know, and survived mostly because they already established a reputation among the public.

Tony thinks about nudging things forward a little bit but..., in the end, doesn't. Not only because giving himself away as an AI capable of inventing things is a tremendously stupid move, but also because Tony, as a man of science, will always love the intricacies of and the many ways technology can exist at the same time he acknowledges the damage it can cause too. If only because people will always think of a way of using the new, brilliant, shinning invention to kill each other – Alberto Santos Dumont always comes to mind in those instances of self-reflection.

So, Tony stays away from the labs and keeps to the routine everyone around him seems to be in, while writing a detailed file about all the things that he can think that people here will need in the future. Without the Infinity Stones, the biggest problem of all is, he assumes, gone, so he focuses on the smaller, Earth-tailored crisis.

It’s a surprisingly small list.

Tony tries not to care. He doesn´t have much time here, anyway. This is more like a favor since he won't exist long enough to help in any shape or form.

The concessions he makes are purely selfish, of course. There isn´t much he can do but he tries anyway: he makes sure that Pepper´s recommendations pass some filters they normally wouldn´t and ends up in the list of some trustful, more worthy companies; same for Happy; for May; chops down some bureaucratic barriers to Rhodey 's military career; increases Mary and Richard´s trust found interest gathering from under the sheets, enough to make sure Peter´s life in college will be comfortable.

Tiny things, nothing that will track attention or trouble should anyone find out after he's gone.

It's frustrating, if only because Tony misses being able to solve this type of mundane problems with a snap of his fingers. But as he watches them living their daily lives, unmarred by the presence of a controlling, narcissistic madman with too many enemies, the low-level troubles start to twist his non-existent stomach for another reason.

Tony had always abhorred the concept of 'normal'.

It never meant he doesn't know it´s value.

-

-

Tony had been here for two months, distracting himself with all SHIELD's top secrets he's now allowed to not only see but also mess with, when the surveillance he put on May and Peter goes balls shit crazy and catch all his attention suddenly – all the projects and tasks under his command are ditched instantly and Tony turns all his processing power at the alarms signaling a problem.

The first thing he bumps into are the subprograms that he hid in May Parker´s cellphone flagging as offline and he understands that it means more than a turned off device. He immediately forces his way through because the surveillance that he set up is intelligent enough to find ways around a destroyed phone and if it warned him, it means there's something more. In an instant he has the security cameras inside and outside their apartment, of Peter's school and May's work, the subway routes they use the most, he pulls Peter's cell phone programs and opens them: the cameras show nothing, neither of them is anywhere in his most immediate access.

But Peter's cell phone reacts. Not entirely. Damaged.

**-activating GPS localization: parker, peter b.**

**-localization found: queens, willow court street, crossing with quarry lane avenue.**

**-hacking: security cameras**

**-hacking parker, peter b. phone: connecting call, forcing call: audio transmission connected.**

Tony finds all cameras with working street view the instant that the connecting links – a faulty traffic light appear in his notifications as he connects with the street security net, and the image of an overturned truck materializes, wheels still spinning in the air, blown glass scattered on the ground in a thousand directions, burnt rubber smoke matching sharp braking marks going from the crosswalk to the middle of the intersection. People spread around like ants and the camera captures the shouting, the other cars being forced to stop or swerve. Multiple 911 calls appear in his data; Tony automatically directs them to all the emptiest clinics. He himself calls 911 too.

Zooms in, passes an image enhancement.

It is when he realizes there is a car underneath the truck.

Tony feels what he thinks is a purely psychological reaction, a body that he doesn´t have freezing, a non-existent heart paralyzing in terror. He is not fully aware of what he´s doing, the virtual equivalent of tearing his way into a place with his bare hands – the mobile camera connects and Peter appears in the backseat, on the ground in a non-existent space, ceiling crashed down on his back, hair wet with blood and face and forehead covered with it, a long cut between the eyebrows.

His breath is frantic, broken. Panicking. Pain. He is crying.

_“-nt May! Aunt May! ” The _insistent sound of a car alarm blasting loudly, horns, creaking metal and breaking glass, are background to his rasping voice. Shortness of breath.

In the background, he hears a '_911, what´s your emergency?_' when his call connects. '_Accident in Willow Court Street with Quarry Lane Avenue. A truck fell over a car with a woman and a teenager inside. Teen is still conscious,_’ He reports and passes on false information from online generators when the woman asks for his identification. Hang up the call.

There is little if almost no light. The phone is a few inches away in front of Peter and does not allow him to see more than the boy. But Tony doesn't have to – he has the street cameras.

He doesn´t need to see the front seat from inside to know.

"Kid, _kid!" _He says without thinking. Shouts. “Can you hear me? I need you to say something.”

The boy jerks, chokes on his cry in his surprise. He moves his head in the little space he has, a moan of pain at the gesture. There is blood on his lips, and Tony is trying not to panic because freaking out right now won't help. "H-... hello?" Peter's voice creaks, desperate.

He sounds terrible, horrible _young_.

Tony hacks the nearest ambulance notification system without thinking – five minutes away.

“I need you to calm down, take slow breathes. Help is coming, okay? You're gonna be _fine.”_

The boy gasps for breath, unsteady. Tony categorizes the sound into fear, adrenaline and the consequence of all the internal injuries such an accident can cause in a normal 14-year-old boy with no accelerated healing power, no super strength, super endurance. A normal, _regular_ kid.

**-warning: processors overheating, ** **data ** **overload.**

_Shit._ Tony shoves absolutely all his other functions to automatic systems not part of his main program. He doesn´t have time for this.

“Hey, hey, hey, no hyperventilating, stop that. I need you to breathe _slower_. Talk to me."

“M… my aunt-…”

“I already called an ambulance, they are on their way.” Tony deflects easily, with no throat to choke, no face to control. “I need you to help me, okay? I know it's scary, but I need you to focus on my voice and just my voice, okay? Can you do that, kid?”

“I…” He swallows thickly, snot mixing with blood in his nose, making each breath way too wet and weak. “… Y- yes.”

“Good, thank you. Can you tell me your name?”

"P… Peter."

“Nice to meet you, Peter. I have a very long name but you can call me Tony, all my friends call me that. Now, Peter, I have a very important mission for you, okay? I need you to tell me if you are hurt somewhere. Just try to feel anything wrong, don't move or touch. Understand that? Don´t move. The less you move, the better. In fact, moving is against the rules, don't move at all, _capiche?_"

He sees the boy start nodding before stopping. _Good boy._ "O-... okay." He closes his eyes for a moment, breathing slowing while cracking, sobbing. “I ... my shoulder is broken, I think, right shoulder or maybe- maybe my arm, I can't… I can't feel my right arm very well. My leg- right leg, it's bleeding, I think I maybe cut it when- when the ceiling collapsed? My back t-too, uh and my chest feels like it's going t-… to explode, and I can't breathe b… because it hurts a- a lot…”

Tony has no eyes to close or lungs to stop breathing, but his main processing pauses for a moment – a nanosecond, as taking a deep breath to control himself, to calm down. Calculations of the survival percentage for something like this are done automatically within his brain, the percentages of the many possible injuries and lifetime consequences as well. He has no choice. His database is no longer just his organic memories but something much more massive and complex. The information comes whether he wants it or not.

"Okay. Thank you, Peter,” He modulates his voice to a calm tone. **Ambulance 200m away. Firefighters 33m away.** “The help is already here, I told them what you just said but you're probably going to have to repeat it, it’s procedure. Just keep breathing. They are going to have to remove the truck from the car and cut through all this metal to get to you, so it´s going to get really loud in here. Don´t panic, okay? I'm gonna be right here, just keep talking to me and all this is going to be over before you know it.”

Tony flickers to the easiest phones to hack in between the two emergency vehicles. StarkPhones. Triggers the connection without bothering to be subtle, volume and vibration at max. The woman in the ambulance starts and pulls the phone from her pocket. The man in the firefighter truck doesn't even notice his phone as the truck is stopping on the side of the accident and he´s climbing down. Tony connects the call to the woman's cell phone without giving her a chance to decline, voice-speaker. _“The kid's name is Peter Parker, the woman is May Parker, his aunt. The woman is in the front seat and probably dead, the kid is in the back seat behind the driver's, laying on the floor on his stomach and still conscious but in a lot of pain.”_

“W-what?” The EMT squeaks, alarmed. Tony can see the two other attendants turning to the phone with confused and shocked expressions.

_“Fractured right humerus or scapula with possible neuronal or circulatory damage. Deep laceration in the right leg, back, and forehead. Massive haemothorax, constricting respiratory capacity, probably multiple broken ribs. He's lucid enough to talk-”_

"Who´s talking?!"

Tony ignores the questions and continues to describe the situation the best he can while flicking back to Peter´s weak, “Where- where are you? You´re not- outside of-... of the car...”

_No, I´m not._ He has no hands to shake, a throat to dry. “I'm on the other side of the city, actually. I was watching the security cameras and saw the accident. Decided to pipe in, you know, give a hand.” The stupid joke is obviously lost on Peter, who frowns slightly, unfocused eyes raising towards the light of the phone. **Battery at 23 %.**

“How… my-my phone…”

“Mn, so, I don't know if I should tell you this, with you being a young and impressible teenager and all that. Probably shouldn´t but I kind hacked into your phone after finding out it was still working. Don´t do that. It´s illegal. FBI gets all annoyed when that happens and you don't want to annoy FBI, believe me.”

“That's… that's cool,” Peter slurs. Shaking. Shit. **Body temperature falling, tachycardia, systemic shock starting. **“Do... do you work for-... the Anonymous?”

Tony flickers to the EMT´s phone but the woman already put it away, climbing down from the ambulance with the others and eyes only in the crash. The firefighters have already removed the tools from their truck and are discussing how to move the crashed vehicle without risking further damage while one of them talks to a civilian, questioning them about what they saw. Tony watches only for the time it takes for EMT to rush to the firefighter preparing the saw and warn them of a possible survivor in the back seat.

Keeps the watch to a secondary processor.

“Yeah, they _wish._ I´m way cooler.”

"What…" Peter begins, tries, but his breathing is the worst thing Tony has ever heard, wet and shallow and useless. The boy coughs and blood paints his mouth, splatters on the already red-painted floor.

The coughs don´t stop.

There´s a screeching – inside his head? "Peter, _Peter _-"

Tony is interrupted by the world shaking and _screaming._


	2. Loading program...

When Peter wakes up, the first doctor who sees him says that he was lucky. _Right scapula with an open fracture,_ the man said reading from a file, _the bone piece almost hit your spine at the shoulder level._ Nicked right femoral artery, massive internal bleeding, four broken ribs, cheekbone cracked, fractured nose… the list goes on. Apparently, he woke up from a two week coma, after two major surgeries and several subsequent reparative ones. A miracle, really, if he thinks about it, considering the condition of the car from which he was removed, that he had no permanent brain damage.

The guy closes the file and smiles.

Later it´s one of the few things that stays with him_. _That man's friendly, blurry smile.

He doesn´t have his glasses.

Then Peter blinks and suddenly there is someone else there: an Asian woman, black hair in a bun and expression serious and no trace of the other doctor – intern, he would find out later, doing a round and who was aggressively pulled out of his room when his actual doctor was paged by someone about what was happening. No one knows who.

This part he will never remember, although it theoretically happened in front of him.

She has his file in her right hand, but she doesn't open it. "Hello, Peter," she says and her voice is surprisingly low. Pleasant. She doesn't sit on the bed, just stands next to it, "I'm sorry about..." she stops, thin lips pressing in a line for an instant.

Peter opens his mouth and tries to speak, but fails. A choked croak is all that comes out and the movement of his throat makes him suddenly aware of the strange obstruction going down into his chest. He tries to move his arm to touch his neck. Can´t. Numb fingers, his right arm is firmly attached to his side. His left hand quivers, but can´t do more than a slow, jerky slide over the bed.

He is lying on his side, Peter realizes.

“You can´t talk right now,” the doctor explains and gestures to her neck, “we had to put... a tube, on your neck, to help you breathe. Because of the fractures in your face, you were unable to breathe alone. We are already in the process of removing it, don't worry. Tomorrow we will take it out and, in a few days, you will be able to speak normally again.”

Peter licks his lips, feeling dry and chapped. His fingers on his free hand curl up on the bed rail. Safety rail. _Hospital._

_Where—_

“You are at Westview Hospital. Today is August 12th, 2015\. Your name is Peter Benjamin Parker, and you´ve been here for the last two weeks, in a coma.” Her eyes carefully flick over his face, searching for something.

He just looks at her. What else can he do?

_Where—_

“You arrived alone. Your aunt… didn´t make it. I'm sorry, Peter.”

_Oh_.

His hand goes still.

His eyes slide down, staring at the emergency button right in front of him.

-

Crying with a tube injecting oxygen into your lungs doesn't hurt. _Anesthesia,_ Dr. Tamaki explained to him later.

They have to anesthetize because otherwise, the patients reject it. And people need oxygen.

Without it, they die.

-

Linda is- she´s nice enough, Peter thinks. With short blond hair wearing a white blouse and black slacks and a gentle way of speaking. She reminds him of her third-grade teacher, who would let him draw on the back of his tests after he finished them.

She talks about health insurance and life insurance because apparently, May did the latter after Uncle Ben died, with the minor´s trust his parents left him as the sole beneficiary, with a will that asks to liquefy her apartment and all her possessions and put the money also in his trust.

And all that, she says, is- _was_ under the care of a bank that declared bankruptcy one week ago.

A judge is trying to see if they can do something, she explains, but things are always slow on civil cases and it´s going to take a while. They still have to find out where he´s going to go.

Because he has to go somewhere.

Linda interrupts something about foster homes when she looks up and sees his face. Peter doesn't know why. He is sitting, the bed folded under him and the IV needle is pressing into the fold of his arm. The tube was removed a few days ago and he can speak if he wants to. 

The big cut crossing the outside of his right thigh is itching, but he was forbidden from scratching.

He glances up to the table between the two when she places some objects on it, after a moment's hesitation. "The police released them yesterday," she says gently.

Peter swallows when he recognizes his aunt's wallet, her cell phone. His is also there. Both battered and with cracks like a spider web, the screen staying black even when he reaches his left hand and manages, after two attempts, to press the on/off button. There are some few traces of blood between the cracks, that Linda or some unknown policeman failed to remove.

About his situation, Peter is understanding very little. Maybe enough.

He swallows again, the block in his throat doesn't move. His eyes are burning and he blinks hard, trying to breathe properly. "S-someone..." his voice rasps painfully, sand against his throat. “Someone c... called. When-- when I was in there.”

“Someone called your phone?” Linda asks when he doesn't continue, and Peter nods, “A friend?”

_A friend._

Of course.

It´s not like- there´s no family left to call him now.

“No, I-… he said he saw the… the accident. He said he… wanted to help.”

Linda is nice, Peter thinks, when she sits next to him on the bed and slides an arm around his shoulders and helps him not overstrain his ribs when the sobs start. She does not question the sudden, random topic as his first words since the accident, accepts his tangent and asks questions that help keep him talking, pulling facts floating in the humming background of his head. The mess, the shouting that he doesn't want to unravel. “He sounds like a good person,” she murmurs after a pause just filled with gasps, her cheek resting on the top of his head, “did he say his name? We could try to find him.”

Peter shakes his head. He slides his free hand under the elbow stuck in the sling.

"I don´t remember."

She hums and pats his shoulder. Leans away, slips back on the chair. Shuffles her papers in an obvious attempt to give him space to recompose. 

And Peter suddenly understands what he failed at first: Linda is nice, because it´s her job to be nice. She’s a social worker. She sees sobbing orphans every day. She finds places for them to go. She helps them.

It´s her job.

Peter swallows the next sob and wipes his tears. His fingers close over his elbow, lips between teeth, when there’s a pause – then Linda clears her throat and goes back to her explanation about foster homes.

“If we can´t find some relatives willing to take you, there’s a nice couple in your town…”

-

They find relatives.

Carol and Luis Compton are cousins of his mother's side – two times removed or something. He never heard of them before, nor they heard of him. Or of his mother, for that matter.

“This is temporary,” is the second thing Mr. Compton says to him, right after ‘fucking great'. In response to Peter introducing himself. The older man, with graying hair and a thin beard and loose tank top and sweatpants, taps his cigarette on the edge of the beer can he is holding, his shoulder against the threshold of the door.

Peter looks up from where he stopped, two steps into the room. It is enough to arrive in the middle of the place. There is a bed crammed into the side not occupied by the washing machine and the dryer, with perhaps a step-distance between. There is a small window at the top of the wall, of the type that does not open more than a few centimeters.

"The room?" Peter asks quietly when Mr. Compton doesn't add anything else.

The man scoffs, smoke spilling from his nose. “This whole shitshow, brat. If it wasn´t for that bitch, you wouldn´t be here, believe me. I´m not planning on letting you leech out of this family and I don´t give a fuck about your sobbing story, so don´t go getting comfortable, hear me?”

"Y-yes."

"Yes,_ sir._"

"Yes, s-sir."

Mr. Compton gives him one last annoyed look and then turns and leaves. At the door slamming shut behind him, Peter flinches.

Breathing faltering, Peter makes himself look around again. There is not much to see. The first glance gave him everything. The white walls and shelves above the washing machine with several buckets and cleaning products stacked. There is an ironing table in between his bed and the wall.

Peter sits on the bed, which creaks in protest. Lets the backpack that the policeman who brought him here gave to him, slide onto the mattress. '_Your stuff' _is what they said. Peter has yet to look inside. Maybe clothes. Probably just clothes.

The light on the ceiling is white and strong. The place smells like bleach, with the only window closed.

He takes off the sneakers that were given to him at the hospital, two numbers too big, and scuttles back until his back is against the wall, pulling legs close to his chest. Let the arm not stuck in the sling rest on his knees as he stares the tile floor of the Comptons' laundry room. His new room. He tries to imagine, as Linda told him: what happens now, the place where he´s going to stay until they figure out where to put him until he´s 18.

'_You got lucky,_' the doctor said with a smile, '_you survived._'

A _ping! _and a tremor in his thigh startles him. He reaches into his pocket without thinking and fishes out both his phone and his aunt´s, as well as her wallet, that they let him keep. The shattered screen is on, cellphone at half-battery thanks to the nurse who lent him her charger. Peter has no idea how he is going to recharger it again.

He blinks, discerning a message from an unknown number as he brings the phone close to his face. He's still without glasses.

**Unknown: ** [Which Avenger Are You?](https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=pt-BR&prev=_t&sl=pt&tl=en&u=https://www.buzzfeed.com/perpetua/avengers-age-of-ultron-quiz)

**Unknown: **i got hawkeye and idk if i should be offended

**Unknown: **i mean i saw him eating cheetos with chopsticks once

Peter stares blankly at the screen. _What?_

He carefully shifts his hand on the cell phone and types an answer. **You: **uh who is talking?

**Unknown: **got over me already kid?

**Unknown: **it´s tony

Frowning, he tries to search for the name in his memories. There was an Anthony and an Antonio in his class at Midtown Middle School. He never spoke to them outside of an occasional 'did you do the homework?' and 'what´s next class?'. He starts typing 'i think you have the wrong number', but then his cell phone shakes with another _ping!_ (when did he turn on the sound and vibration?) and a new bubble appears.

**Unknown: **how are you holding up? got out alright from the hospital? you sounded pretty bad back in the

**Unknown: **you know

An inkling starts crawling its way among the blank noise inside his head and Peter bites his lips. Hesitating. It seems like a ridiculous possibility, but what if…

He slowly types.

**You: **are you the guy

**You: **uh

**Unknown: **that called you in the car? yes

**Unknown: **tony stark, one and only

Oh.

Right.

Peter exhales and rubs his eyes with the back of his hand, and then lies down on the side of his good shoulder. The bed shudders and moans precariously. Sliding his thumb over the biggest crack in the cell phone screen, he lets his eyes hover over the symbol showing that it has service, just like the little ‘5G’ on the top corner – thinks, probably because no one told the company that the paying client died.

His stomach churns and turns cold and Peter rubs his eyes again, harder.

He'll probably only have service until the end of the month.

A lump in his throat strangles the sound wanting to rise from his chest, and he cannot say whether it would be a laugh or a sob. Swallowing air, Peter quickly blinks his eyes at the cell phone that trembled and rang again several times in quick succession.

**Unknown: **hey

**Unknown: **hey

**Unknown: **lost you already?

**Unknown: **don´t ignore me

**Unknown: **you gonna hurt my feelings

**Unknown: **hey

Peter squeezes his cell phone for a moment, its weight and white light a focal point before he can swipe his thumb over the keyboard. He has to press harder on the 'e' key.

**You: **like the brand?

**Unknown: **finally

**Unknown: **what

**You: **hasn´t passed 2 minutes dude

**You: **your name. Stark, like Stark Industries?

**Unknown: **i´ll have you know, the name 'stark' didn´t sprout out when Howard Stark was born. it is an ancient Anglo-Saxon name used since the early Middle Ages, used by thousands of people for generations

**You:** yeesh sore spot?

**Unknown: >:(**

Peter feels his lips quiver, wanting to curl up on the corners, and the action alarms him to the point of the smile threatening to form disappears. Air rushes out of him silently, suddenly.

His hands start to shake.

**You:** wy are you textig me

There is a pause. No bubbles appear on the screen as he stares at it.

_Knock-knock_

"Peter?"

Peter jumps up and stuffs his phone back in his pocket when the door opens with a soft click and a loud creak. A woman with short black hair and in a suit appears in the doorway, expression hesitating, carrying a towel on her arm. "Hi," she says, her voice gentle.

He lets his feet fall back to the floor, good hand on his thigh.

"H... hi."

She smiles. “It´s nice to meet you, Peter. I´m Carol. Luis probably already introduced himself, right?”

Peter swallows and, tongue between teeth, only nods.

She gives him a speculative look for a moment, studying him from head to toe, and then offers the towel. “Here. You should take a shower. Dinner is in 1 hour.”

He stands up and approaches carefully, taking the towel after a moment's hesitation. "Where..."

"Down the hallway, second door to the left," she explains, indicating with her hand without looking. "Do you have a toothbrush?"

"I... I don´t know, I didn´t check yet."

She glances down to his simple schoolbag on the bed, containing everything he owns now and Peter tries not to shrink, but there´s nothing he can do about how his face burns in shame, stomach flipping and twisting. He clenches the towel closer to him, eyes falling to the ground.

“Tell me when you do, so I know if I have to buy one. Anything else that you need?”

Peter hesitates, but in the end, the blurry floor makes him stutter, “I… my glasses broke when…”

Mrs. Compton sighs and rubs her neck.

He stops talking.

"Okay. I´ll ask Luis to take you to an oculist during the week. Anything else?” she asks, already turning away.

Peter shifts on his feet and shakes his head. "No."

The older woman nods. “I already talked with the local school, by the way. They are going to lend you the books and stuff and I already got you a few notebooks and some pens. You start tomorrow,” she tells him and then leaves.

-

In the bathroom, all surfaces and shelves are empty and Peter has the impression that if he was to open the cabinet, it'd be empty too.

He doesn´t.

There´s a single piece of soap in the shower.

He takes his cell phone out of his pocket to put on the sink. That's when he sees the messages on the screen.

**Unknown:** well i broke a few dozens of laws when I talked with you, now im invested

**Unknown:** how are you kid?

He stares at the question for a full minute. Then he locks the phone and leaves it on the sink facing down.

-

The battery dies the next day.

He can't make himself ask for a charger.

-

The Comptons have a daughter around his age, perhaps a year older, whose name they never tell him and who he only sees during dinner, punctually at 19h, every night. On the first night, she glances up from her cell phone – a state-of-the-art StarkPhone – only long enough to look him up and down and wrinkle her nose, before turning back at rolling through an Instagram page.

It is the total extent of all the interactions they have.

Mrs. Compton works as a secretary in some company, leaving in the morning and returning at 6 pm, when she goes straight to the kitchen to start cooking dinner. Mr. Compton, Carol explained it in a sweet and proud voice, works from home as a writer and that´s why no one is allowed to make any noise when the man locks himself in his ‘office’ and the noise of the TV is audible throughout the house. Because it disturbs his 'creative art'. 

The daughter goes to school and returns home with the mother.

Peter takes the bus to and from school. On the first day, he wakes up and finds a brown paper bag on the table with his name, which when he peeks inside, he sees that it appears to be a lunch consisting of a sandwich, juice and an apple. Luis promptly snatches it out of his hand when the man passes him on the way to the front door. “Like hell you gonna take more food from this house. You fucking ask the school, they give free lunch to freeloaders like you,” the man snapped before shoving him out of the door.

When Mrs. Compton asked if he liked the lunch she left, he made the mistake of looking at the older man. He quickly looked down at his plate before muttering, “I- I didn't see it. Sorry.”

The woman frowned slightly and looked at her husband. "Honey, did you eat his lunch by mistake?"

Luis, who had a cigarette hanging between his lips, didn´t react much. Peter saw the muscles in his jaw tensing once before he suddenly relaxed. "I thought you left it for me," he said casually.

“I wrote his name on it, dear! Honestly.”

The man shrugged. "Didn´t see it."

Mrs. Compton shook her head, an amused smile on her mouth as she patted Peter on the shoulder. "Don´t worry. Tomorrow I´ll leave it next to your breakfast, so there´s no mistake.”

The next morning, Peter barely stepped out of the laundry room when Luis appeared next to him and grabbed his arm not in the sling, fingers sinking into the flesh. Peter flinched and tried to take a step back on instinct but the man pulled him back roughly with an even tighter grip. “Don't ever,” he snarled, yellow teeth bared, breath smelling strong of beer and cigarettes, “humiliates me that way again under _my _house. Hear me, you piece of shit?”

Eyes wide and vision blurry, Peter swallowed any sound and nodded quickly. Luis sunk his fingers one last time, hard, before letting him go, and Peter stumbled back, in his hurry slamming his back against the door. He breathed through his nose, fast, opening and closing his hand and feeling the throbbing in a band around his arm, his biceps hot and burning in five points.

The older man snorted disdainfully and stomped away without a second glance.

Peter stayed there for a time, trying to get his breath back to normal and stop the nauseated whirl in his stomach, threatening to rise in his throat. By the time he finally made himself walk, arm sore, the school bus was already long gone.

As he passed the kitchen on his way out, there was no paper bag nor breakfast on the table.

(A gray car slides by his side after a few minutes walking on the sidewalk and Peter only notices it when the driver leans on the window and asks, "Hey, did you order a uber?"

He startles to a stop and looks at the driver. A woman.

“N- no, sorry. It must be a mistake,” he mumbles.

She seems to frown. He´s not sure. He can´t really distinguish her face in this distance. "Are you sure?" She thumbs her phone and turns the screen to him. “That´s you, right? Peter?”

His heart jumps a little as he shakes his head and turns to start walking again, this time faster. “It- it must be a bug. Sorry,” he throws over the shoulder and tenses when hears the car moving, only relaxing when it drives away.

That part of this particular day doesn´t stick with him. His arm was still hurting.)

After this day, he stops even looking and only nods when Mrs. Compton asks if he liked the lunch. She never really asks for more details, happy with his non-vocal answers.

Peter doesn´t offer anything more anyway.

He decides one night, the third day, that it doesn´t matter, and he doesn´t care. Since the hospital and Linda, he has yet to cry again. He still remembers Uncle Ben´s death and the days that followed. He doesn´t remember his parents'.

He doesn´t really remember Aunt May´s either.

Does that say something about him?

(“Yikes,” a girl will say a week later at school because someone got wind of how he came to be in their school and she´s the one who lets him know that everyone knows. She wrinkles her nose at him and asks her friend, loudly, "do you think he killed them? You know, set up the accidents?")

He doesn´t sleep for most of the nights, in the first week.

-

The school has fifty kids per class and the hallways are always so crowded that you can´t walk without getting elbowed and kicked and pushed.

Or maybe it´s because he´s the new kid.

It doesn´t get better when he´s quickly and swiftly established as a 'know-it-all', as the little nerd from the fancy school and a teacher´s pet. Peter blinks and his status of 'new student' drops to 'outsider'. Accidentally. He had no intentions of showing off, he just did not think that raising his hand when no one else was paying attention would become a thing to be held against him, or that doing homework would be interpreted as being ‘snub’. The material here is several levels back and never goes as deep as he is used to. It was not on purpose. Peter was never _popular,_ but in a school like Midtown Middle School, the 'nerd' category doesn't exist. He was part of the general population, too ordinary to stand out in one way or another in the school's social hierarchy. He just did what he always did.

And in a few weeks, he finds out what it's like to be at the bottom of the food chain.

He´s trying to open his locker where the numbers have blurred into a white line and someone slams against him. The books fly out of his hand, falling to the ground to be immediately stepped on by the crowd walking around him. People jeer and laugh and he gets more than three people screaming at his face to get out of the way. His books lose pages, covers folded and wrinkled and the teachers admonish him in front of all class for not taking care of his things when someone loudly asks if it´s okay to have torn books, ignoring or outright telling him to shut up when he tries to explain.

He learns to be fast on his way to find a table because people will trip him or outright slap his lunch out his hands. If not, backpacks or legs will take any available chairs, people divided between those who ignore him and those who will let it clear that sitting at their table is going to be a mistake – nobody wants to associate with the outsider. _We don´t like you,_ it´s the message. He learns to scarf the food down because finding a table sometimes isn´t enough.

Someone starts a trend in the third week and Peter starts coming to classes to his missing table. The teachers sigh and tsk and admonish the students and then orders him to go find the table. Most of the time it´s in the bathroom, sometimes outside.

Every so often he can´t find it and has to choose between missing the class or sitting on the floor among sniggers.

Peter stops offering answers in the classroom, stops raising his hand, and when a teacher asks him something, he learns to shrug with his eyes on the table. He continues to do all his homework, a refuge to which he clings and the excuse he has to hide in the library after school. But in class, he pays attention to other students and except the ones that matter to his final grade, when no one else hands on the material, Peter also doesn´t.

(They try to steal his homework a few times before that – the first time, a guy from his class corners him on the hallway and demands his English paper. But suddenly the fire alarm explodes in loud screeching right above their heads and the guy is so surprised that Peter manages to hastily get away and duck into the next class. The last, a girl o foot taller than him rips his homework and tries to set the pieces on fire, only to a teacher with a phone against the ear step outside of a class right behind her. She´s expelled the next day.

Then Peter stops handing homework every day and incidents decrease and things get a little… not better. No. But tolerable. Peter thinks it´s because he learned to keep his head down.

In part it is.

But he has no reason to think otherwise, after all.)

Despite all this, he still does his best to find reasons to stay in school after classes are over. Luis's threat on the first day is something that lingers in his mind every time he steps inside that house, seeping into his skin like a tension he can't shake off – a tightness at the bottom of his stomach every time he crosses paths with the man.

Before, Luis probably had the whole house for him all day. And it couldn't be more obvious that man hates the change.

Peter breaks the silence rule once, dropping his backpack from the kitchen table while doing his homework. He hears the sound of the television leaking when a door opens seconds after he opens his notebook, and he looks up to see Luis emerging from the office, his face twisted with anger. Peter barely has time to dodge when the man hurls a beer can at his head, cold liquid splashing his face and spilling over his notebook when it hits his shoulder instead.

“Fucking _shut up!” _Heroars and Peter has to fight the urge to run away, scrambling to get his things into his bag.

“S-sorry-” he tries, but the door is already slamming shut like thunder.

He scampers off to his bedroom as quiet as he can and never attempts to do his homework anywhere but there.

However, it soon becomes apparent it´s not enough and doesn´t matter how quiet Peter is, because perhaps it´s simply his presence that bothers Luis. He takes to kick or punch his door whenever Peter´s in the house – not home, the word tastes bitter on his tongue when he tries saying that –, screaming about noise, even if he hadn´t done anything but sit on the bed, reading. And while he never touches Peter again like the first day, the older man develops a taste for throwing things in his direction. A shoe, a can, a book, whatever happens to be closest to him.

Never _on _him, but always close enough to startle, enough to set a nervousness and keep Peter on edge, never knowing if this time the blow will land.

So, Peter starts staying at school after class. As there are no clubs or extracurricular activities there, he often ends up in the small room that the school calls a library. Doing homework or sleeping or even organizing the books, desperate for anything to pass his time. The computers are elderly and outdated, with a restricted internet that only allows access to some predetermined sites. No social media, except email.

His inbox, when he checks it out for the first time, is full of reminders of the Midtown's calendar of events and notifications from Facebook, Twitter. Most are notices that Ned Leeds sent you a message/photo/tagged on, would you like to see it?

He thinks about sending an email, to let him know that it's Peter´s only way to chat online now. But he ends up staring at the blank box for hours, fingers still on the keyboard, not knowing what to write. 

In the end, the library's closing time arrives and he shuts down the computer without typing anything and leaves.

It is not one time that he does this. Weeks go by and eventually Peter gives up and stops even opening his email.

-

He's walking around the corridor to his locker, stomach empty, when he hears a mechanical hiss and he automatically looks to the side. A semi-full vending machine greets him. Peter blinks, tired, and is about to walk away when another hiss calls his attention to the side of the machine: to the place of putting money and the twenty-dollar bill hanging on it.

Peter freezes.

He looks around, but almost everyone is still at the cafeteria eating. Not a lot of people in the hall, no one close enough or with the characteristic irritation of someone who had their twenty dollars swallowed. He gulps once and approaches the machine slowly. He raises his hand to the bill but hesitates. _Isn't this stealing? _He thinks with a pit on his stomach.

The machine whirs again and the bill slips back in.

Before he can unfreeze on his own, he´s startled from his shock by a louder humming and glances to the side. A black spring on the other side of the glass is twisting, to then drop a can of coke with a heavy thud. Peter blinks quickly. His hand slowly descends from where it was still hovering midair to the gray metallic hatch. Fingers on the edge, he hesitates again. His stomach twists painfully empty. Another humming and he looks up in time to see the bag of chips failing. Heart racing for some reason, Peter reaches into the entrance and feels the aluminum creak when he grabs it.

He pulls the two items out and stares at them for a moment, before standing up. His stomach is rumbling urgently and the package creaks as Peter opens it with trembling fingers, the smell of salt and artificial cheese filling his mouth with water. “Oh, dude,” he whispers, starting to dig in the overly salty chips.

Another mechanic whirr makes him snap his head up and to his shock, the twenty-dollar bill is rolling out again, this time from the exchange exit.

Swallowing the badly chewed mass in his mouth, he reaches for the bill slowly. This time the machine doesn´t take it back and Peter is allowed to pull out the money.

The bill has a strange weight in his hand. He cannot say whether it is the guilty or the exaltation of having money.

He thinks of a time when a twenty dollars didn´t feel like a lot to him, and pockets the bill.

-

He puts the bill back on the machine the next day, a heavy conscience forcing his hand, and turns and leaves without typing anything.

Only to see, when he passes that hallway again later, two ten-dollar bills hanging off the change exit. When he looks through the glass, a can of juice and a natural sandwich are at the bottom of the machine. He bites his lip and looks around, looking for someone uttering hatred against vending machines, but there´s no one. He rubs the back of his neck and then grabs the food, puts it in his backpack for emergencies, and tries again to return the money. The machine sucks the bills and without Peter typing anything, he drops two bars of chocolate before spitting out a twenty.

He thinks about notifying someone that the machine is defective, but quickly gives up on the idea, thinking about the reaction of the other students if this is a carefully kept secret. If they find out that he was the one who reported it.

There is some guilt when two days later he comes back and without having to put the money or type in, the same thing happens. Peter accumulates forty dollars in Aunt May's wallet that he doesn't know what to do with – he thinks for a moment, a swelling of hope and positivity, about the possibility of buying a pair of glasses. But the idea is soon overwhelmed by the reality that he would need a prescription, and for that, a visit to the doctor with a legal guardian and he told Mrs. Compton in the first week that Luis took him to one.

Luis shoved a pair of glasses on his hands on the fourth day. "So that the bitch will fucking shut up," he grumbled as the explanation and walked away.

Peter tried the glasses. Their prescription was so strong that his already blurry vision deteriorated into an unclear fog and his eyes felt like they were being pushed into his skull. He quickly removed them and never touched them again. He didn´t contradict when Luis declared that night that he got Peter the glasses, just said he needed them only to read when Carol asked why he wasn´t wearing them.

She would probably ask her husband to take him again, regardless of the excuse he came up.

_No to mention,_ the guilt says, _that this is stealing. Is that what you do now?_

Peter continues walking to the next class, hands deep in his pockets and one around Aunt May's wallet. Today he managed to escape the canteen with a tray without attracting anyone's eyes, but the food didn´t seem enough. He still is hungry. But he can´t repeat, anywhere. Without breakfast, at night he eats only what Mrs. Compton puts on his plate and does not dare to ask for more.

_So, you´re gonna steal? Will you become a thief?_

His sneakers are the ones the hospital gave to him. Big ones. He tripped more than once because of them, combined with his lack of vision.

He has a headache every day because he has to strain his eyes in every class to see the blackboard, the book, the lessons. Most of the time it doesn't work. He has to write what the teacher says if they are slow enough. Studying for exams takes much longer, he sometimes can't cover all the material in time-

_I bet he was also pretty desperate. I bet he also said he didn´t have a choice, he said he only wanted the money-_

The wallet seems to burn in his hand, to weigh inside his pocket. He remembers Aunt May in the hospital with red-rimmed eyes, trying to do nothing more than speaking kindly, a trembling hand on his back. _They did everything they could, Peter—_

_-_

"C´mon in."

He pushes the door and walks inside the school secretary´s office, a room overflowing with cabinets and piles upon piles of documents and smell of cigarettes and stale air. A middle-aged woman glances up from an ancient computer and gives him a frown. "Can I help you?" She asks.

Peter pulls out the snacks and the forty dollars and puts them over her table, before saying quietly, “The vending machine is broken. It keeps dropping items and returning the money.”

"Oh." She darts a look over the snacks and money and then nods. “Thank you for telling me. I´ll ask someone to fix it. Anything else?”

Peter walks out and goes to his next class.

-

The next time he passes thought that hallway, there are two men in gray jumpsuits putting the vending machine in a trolley. They wheel it out.

The space stays empty after that.

His stomach starts protesting again on the days he can't go to the cafeteria, but his conscience feels a little bit lighter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> someone asked if this is inspired by the comics, where apparently Tony left an AI of himself to a little girl? the honest answer is no, because i don´t really read the comics (but now i´ll have to go take a look eheh). If i had to point a source of inspiration for this story, i´d have to say the movie Her (2013), but besides the idea of creating a relationship with something 'artificial' and bodiless, no other element of the movie is going to appear here.
> 
> Thanks for reading. Please leave a review on the way out


	3. System online. Please insert ID to start.

He is leaving the room with his backpack strapped over his shoulder when he senses a presence by his side. Peter barely manages not to flinch, when he realizes it is Carol. She doesn't seem to notice anything and just hands him a package, and already caught off guard by her mere presence - since she is usually gone by the time he leaves to go to school -, Peter simply takes it without thinking twice.

It´s a very light package, no bigger than a book, with his name scribbled on the side. He stares.

Carol is speaking. “—came to my office yesterday night, I´m not sure why. I checked to make sure if it wasn´t a mistake from the post office, but apparently, it really is for you.”

He sees the name Linda Bernard as the 'sender' and his heart hiccups, stomach twisting.

Peter glances up at Carol's expectant look. The daughter is at the end of the hallway, tapping on her cellphone, and Luis is eyeing the package over the newspaper from the kitchen table. 

He swallows and gingerly slides the box under his arm. “Thank you,” he says quietly and steps towards the door. He walks through the kitchen, careful to keep his eyes on the floor even when he catches a glimpse of a beige paper bag on the table. He can feel a tingling at the back of his head from someone's gaze – he can't tell whose – until the moment he closes the door behind him.

His heart is racing. Peter cannot--no, rather, he knows, for all that he wishes he didn't.

About a week or so after he started living with the Comptons, Linda came to visit. He can still remember the flare of hope he felt when he saw her—and how numb and quiet his mind became when she left after looking around the house, just ticking things on her clipboard. Peter doesn't want-- _knows_ better than put himself through that again, yet a part of him whispers, _maybe_— 

He reaches the bus stop and sits down, before sliding the package over his lap. _Maybe she saw and this is the first step to take him away from here_. He falters, fingers hovering.

_Maybe she realized how miserable he's here._

He slowly opens it.

Peter blinks when he finds himself looking at a bare metallic cylinder, slightly flattened. Smooth and rounded on the ends, it has no marks or designs anywhere on its surface, so polished it catches and reflects the light gently as he moves it. He looks into the package again, looking for a letter or even a note. But there is nothing, even when he unfolds it until it's only a wrinkled cheap wrapping paper, the type you can buy in any store. Pushing down a surge of disappointment, Peter puts it down and goes back to inspect the cylinder. He runs his fingers across the cold metal while turning it on his palms, and finds a small concavity in the center of the longest width. He gently pushes and the cylinder clicks open, the upper half rotating away with mechanical smoothness and revealing—

—a pair of glasses.

Rectangular, with the lens of a very light blue and black rims, the earpieces are white. Sunglasses.

Peter inhales through the sudden weight on his chest, holding the glasses case in both hands as he leans back against the wall. Pulling his legs over the seat, he then lets the air escape at once, blinking quickly. _Ha_, a tiny voice mocks then, _you really thought._ He stifles the thought at once, as disappointment turns into humiliation.

He picks the glasses almost absently and slides them on. _Comfortable, _Peter thinks tiredly as he drops his head against the wall and closes his eyes—

_“System online. Please insert ID to start.”_

—and promptly opens them with a startle.

Peter casts a swift look around the bus stop, trying to find the person who just talked. There´s no one, however. Just him. He scratches his head, baffled, until he notices for the first time the _letters_ hovering mid-air right in front of him, slowly flickering like a neon sign. _Please insert ID to start_. Peter blinks several times and then deliberately moves his head... The letters follow the movement, remaining in the center of his vision. He raises his hands to the glasses and lowers them over his nose. The words disappear. He puts them back. They come back.

"Uh. What—”

_“Auditory input accepted. User identified and registered. Mr. Peter Benjamin Parker, welcome to the first artificial intelligence operator system in the world, T.O.N.Y. – Tech Of Non-destructive Yakking. Would you like to activate the personal assistant-mode?”_

Peter touches the earpieces lightly. It's coming from them, the sound – the _voice_. Mechanical and very robot-like, almost like a better version of a text-to-speak translator. He removes the sunglasses and rotates them, looking... for something. He doesn't know what. There’s nothing on the earpieces that indicate a sound device and seen from the other side, the lenses look perfectly normal.

He puts them back after a moment.

_T.O.N.Y._

_Activate?_

Peter opens and closes his mouth a few times. Hesitantly says, "I-yes?"

The words promptly fold into a white line, which then twists and flashes into the shape of a blue circle with a triangle in the middle, pulsing slowly. A loading symbol? He doesn't recognize it. Peter watches as the symbol dissolves and leaves him with regular vision, hands frozen on the glasses.

_“Now _this," someone suddenly speaks. “_Is how it´s done, don´t you think?_”

Peter jumps to his feet with a yelp, and can't help but whirl, looking around again. The bus stop remains empty with no one but him. The male voice continues, smooth and steady and nothing like the cut-off word-for-word speech from before, with a tone of distinct amusement and sounding as if the owner were standing right beside him. They aren't. _“They say they want a portable smart interface with bio-scanners and custom adjustment system and sure, who doesn´t? ‘Go wild’ is what I said. But then, in the process, they absolutely _butcher_ the design to this hideous, bulky _travesty_. Who the hell wants to walk around with an one-pound coke-bottle glasses? It may have looked cool in Star Trek, but c'mon.”_

“Uh—um-”

_“Yes?”_

“Ahm—"

_“Eloquence is not one of your personal traits, is it—”_

Peter rips the glasses off and the voice fades immediately. He stares at it, eyes wide. Nothing seems to have changed, it still looks like ordinary sunglasses.

He slowly put them back once more. As the earpieces slide over his ears, the male voice flows back like someone walking closer to him. It sounds slightly miffed. _“-horrible _rude_. Did you just leave me hanging, kid?”_

“Sorry,” says Peter’s mouth. Then he realizes what he said and he shakes his head, closing his eyes. “Uh, who- who is talking? How- is this some type of cell phone? Someone emailed it to me but-”

_“Cell phone?”_ the voice echoes, offended. _“A type of- no, I´m not a type of _cell phone_. Didn't you just activate the assistant-mode? What part of ‘first artificial intelligence operator system’ you didn't get?”_

His brain screeches to a halt, thoughts tumbling one over the other and Peter opens his eyes, staring wide-eyed at the empty street. What.

_“First in the world. You should feel honored. Honestly, a _cell phone_.”_

No way_._

He slowly takes his hands off the sunglasses, suddenly caught in the feeling that he just walked into a room filled to the brim with expensive things he couldn't dream of ever paying. “Wh- what- how--”

“_Magniloquent_,” it replies drily.

“You- are you serious? Is this- you are an, an AI?” His voice squeaks on the last word.

_“Why would I lie about that? Why would anyone, for that matter? Yes, by the way. Artificial intelligence, the first one in history, blah, blah, and all that.”_ Peter jumps when the acronym T.O.N.Y. takes over his vision as if floating in the air in front of him. It expands to full words as the voice continues. _“Tech Of Non-destructive Yakking. Not a very flattering name and a mouthful, I know. My father wasn't the best with naming his inventions. You might wanna lower your voice, kid, only you can hear me.”_

Yakking? Father? “Only- only me? Why? How?”

_“Bone conduction speakers on the earpieces. Top of the line. Send vibrations straight into the top of your jaw and from there to your inner ear and brain_, _while keeping your ears free. So, you can hear the rest of the world just like you would normally, at the same time it guarantees privacy since only who is wearing the glasses can hear me. So, try to avoid talking to me when in the middle of a crowd. Or people are going to think you're a bit loose on the head.”_

“Wow. That's-” the ‘amazing’ stops on his tongue as the advice sinks in. He glances around again. There's no one at the bus stop, but some cars are driving through the street. An old man checking his mailbox is giving him funny looks from the opposite sidewalk.

Face heating in a blush, Peter quickly sits down again.

The reply is nonchalant. "_Yeah, yeah, I'm amazing, yadda-yadda. Get it out of your system now or it's going to get repetitive.”_

His brain is slowly catching up to the situation and he has to sit on his hands to stop himself from gesturing wildly. The same can't be done to his mouth, the words tumbling out in a somehow shrill whisper, “Are you saying- are you saying you´re an actual, legit artificial intelligence? Not a virtual assistant like-”

_“If you're about to compare me to Siri, I'll honest-to-god drop this conversation and never talk to you again.”_

Peter snaps his mouth closed. For a second. Then the words are bursting out without his control again. “But does this mean you're a _real_ AGI?”

The voice _sighs_, a distinguishing human-like gesture. Exasperated. Which is an emotional nuance. In an artificial voice system. An emotional nuance in an artificial voice system. Oh god.

_“I'm not a one-trick pony if that's what you're asking. Not anymore, anyway. If you want to get technical, I started as an ANI. An incredible advanced, top-of-the-line, _mind-blowing_ ANI, mind you, and even back then I had already aced the Turing Test. Got here by myself, however, and yeah, people tend to classify me as an AGI, although I find the term ‘general intelligence’ slightly offensive.”_

Peter's eyes are very wide. “Oh god,” he breathes softly.

_“It's sad that as far as my conversation experiences go, it’s not the least coherent answer I’ve ever gotten. Did I break you, kid? I usually go with the ‘frog in cold water’ strategy to avoid boggling people who talk with me for the first time, but since we had already met, I thought we could skip it.”_

“We… did?” his voice falters. Peter is pretty, _pretty_ sure he'd remember talking with an AGI.

_“You know, this whole ‘forgetting about me’ is really starting to bruise my ego. I like to think I'm memorable.”_

“What?”

_“This has been bugging me, actually. People don't ignore me. That just doesn't happen. And lo and behold, I'm _right_. Not that this is surprising at all. What's surprising- or better, _outrageous_, is that you've been walking around without a charged phone for the last three and a half _months_.”_

The accusingly _affronted_ tone – as if Peter not having a phone was somehow an offense personally aimed at the AI – makes him stumblingly stammer out a half-coherent explanation of how he didn't have a charger and why he didn't feel like he could ask for one. Something that, two minutes ago, sounded perfectly reasonable. However, something about what it- he? said tickles his memory, and Peters halts. Frowns.

A memory from months ago comes forth and the pieces slot into place. His voice rises an octave or two. “You--in the accident—the messages, that- _it was you?_”

_“What, now you remember me?”_

Peter feels something wash down his spine, spreading like a prickle over his skin, mind whirling but blank. His mouth hangs open.

_“_Not_ to sound like a jealous ex-girlfriend grilling you after summer vacations. What kind of teenager doesn´t use social media, anyway? Your Facebook has been gathering dust for the last three months. You have 232 unchecked notifications, 211 of which-” _A whistle. “_Now_ _that´s what I call persistence – are from Ned Leeds. Friends of yours, I gather? Seems like a nice kid. Your bus is turning the street, by the way, so you might wanna stop gawking at nothing.”_

Peter’s mouth closes with a painful clank of teeth against teeth as he suddenly notices the bus. Sliding to a stop in front of him, the doors hiss and pop open. Stuffing the glasses case in his hoodie pocket and throwing the package into the trash can, he scrambles forward. Tripping over his own feet in a hurry to climb inside, Peter misses the last step and almost face-plant the floor. He manages to avoid that with a clumsy stumble at the last second, that makes him skid on the bus floor. Face red, he mumbles a greeting to the bus driver who raises an eyebrow at him and scurries to his usual place with eyes firmly on the floor.

The bus is full, as always, with kids laughing and talking loudly with each other.

Peter plunks down on the seat, backpack on his lap, feeling wired with adrenaline and disbelief. He tries to breathe and calm down his stuttering heartbeat a little, and dries his sweating palms on his thighs.

_“That was kind of embarrassing. Are you okay, kiddo?”_

Peter glances around but no one seems to be paying attention to him in the slightest – thankfully. Pulling his hoodie up, he turns to the window and pads his face on his arm as if intending to take a nap, hiding his mouth from the view of anyone. “Yeah, uh, yeah, I'm good. Just,” he croaks out. He clears his throat, tries again. The words taste weird in his mouth. “You're the guy who- who called me in the car? And texted me all those months ago?”

“_Haven't we established that already? C'mon, Petey, keep up with the conversation flow.”_

“Petey? No, wait, that's.” Shaking his head once, Peter fights to reel his thoughts in a straight line. “Just… why? Why would a- a freaking super AI call me?”

_“I'm a tool made to help humanity, kid,”_ T.O.N.Y. says casually as if this is the last interesting question Peter could have asked. “_You needed my help, so I helped_.”

Peter's mind grinds to an abrupt stop and he stares at nothing, blankly, as the words drown out everything else for a second. ‘You needed help, so I helped’, like it's _that_ easy. A matter of A+B=C. Logical and simple. You needed help and I went out of my way for no particular feeling of obligation or responsibility. Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy. Don't mention it!

Peter has spent the past three months feeling invisible, and now facing the opposite of it is leaving him feeling... flooded.

He swallows thickly, blinking fast. _A computer_, he tells himself. _A computer_. They are grounded on algorithms, A+B=C. It's _easy_ for them.

“_Ignoring me again?_”

Peter screws his eyes shut. “No, I just. I mean, I guess- I owe you, then. Owe you a- a…” He lets out a shaky breath.

His throat feels tight, clogged, and the word just won't come out.

_“You don't have to say anything, kid.”_

His eyes are burning. “But-”

_“Look,”_ the AI says and for the first time, the self-assured tone that has been reigning on its every word is absent. Instead, it sounds… awkward. But quiet. Soothing. “_I understand- well, let’s not get philosophical. You really don´t have to say it._”

Peter nods -- then remember there isn't really a point in nodding here. He quickly wipes the tears from under the glasses, feeling a surge of embarrassment heating his face. “So,” he says. “How… how does this work? Is this some sort of experiment about AIs? Social experiment? Is the government involved? I´m part of a social experiment from the government?”

It doesn't comment on the desperate change of subject. “_Why the government has to be involved?”_

“So, the government is _not_ involved? Because I saw this video-”

_“Okay, I'm gonna stop you right there. No, the government is not involved. In fact, as I said before, me simply talking to you breaks a few dozens of laws – human and otherwise. So, let’s keep this as our little secret, okay kid? Moving on-”_

“Wait, wait, wait.” Peter almost straightens up. Almost jumps, actually. But jerks to a stop in the middle of the motion, head snapping against the seatback. He darts a hasty look around, but no one seems to have noticed anything. He whispers shrilly. “I’m breaking the law by talking to you or by using the sunglasses?”

_“Eh, both.”_ T.O.N.Y. is very... blasé. Something lodges in Peter's throat when he tries to speak and the result is a sort of squawk. The AI either ignores this or takes it as a request to elaborate, because it casually continues, “_No one knows, of course. Not that they'd even think to ask. So, you don't have to worry your pretty, gen z head about it. In the highly unlikely scenario where someone does try to question you, you can just say you didn't know about anything_.”

“But.” His voice cracks, high-pitched. “Why would Mrs. Bernard send me the sunglasses if it's _illegal_?”

_“Mrs. Bernard,” _AI replies with disdain and Peter blinks, a little taken aback. "_Was just a handy solution_. _I told you already. I don't deal well with people ignoring me. It bugs me. So, the glasses. They are technically yours, anyway.”_

Peter startles with realization. “Hold on, did _you_ send me the glasses?”

“_I feel like we keep talking in circles.”_

“You _you_? As in, _you_ decided to send me the glasses? In secret? Without any human input?”

“_I'm a big boy, kid. I need no human with a fancy keyboard to help me make my own decisions_.”

Peter makes a little ‘huh’ and wets his lips, feeling them dry. “Does that mean you're capable of... of making autonomous choices?”

_“I wouldn't be an AGI if I had to bank on humans, now, would I? Proactive characteristics, autonomous self-learning algorithms, and real-time decisioning. Main components of little old me.”_

High cognitive abilities, on a computer. Peter gulps down a big breath and tries very hard not to freak out. It does not work 100% well. To both ends of the spectrum. He suddenly wishes he had not developed an interest in artificial intelligence last year, because perhaps then he wouldn't be thinking about anything beyond how absolutely cool and awesome and _mind-blowing_ all of this is. The fact he's talking with a _super-computer_. He's _talking_ with a super-computer. _He'_s talking with a super-computer.

_Okay, Peter, cool it_. First things first.

“Like, out of curiosity,” he starts. “In a scale of Gladdos to Samantha, how are your feelings about humanity?”

T.O.N.Y. snorts. _“I'm not about to sing you love serenades, kid.”_

This startles a snort out of Peter – who then snaps a hand over his mouth, taken by surprise. The sound is almost alien, it sounds alien, and it seems to scrape against his throat. In reality, Peter realizes that his throat is slightly sore. His mouth is dry, his tongue feels tired. It is the first time in weeks that he has spoken more than ten words in a row, he suddenly understands.

The smile melts from his face. His cheeks muscles, before cramping, soothe.

“_Alright there, Pete?_”

Peter blinks rapidly, turning to look outside the window. He tries to reply, even opens his mouth — but nothing comes out. For a moment, all he hears is the sound of the bus and the other students talking around him. His hand curls around a fistful of his jeans and don't open again.

Then, as casually as before, it speaks. Yet it sounds different. Slower. Softer?_“If that´s such a big deal, I can play you something. But believe me when I say no one wants to hear me singing.”_

Peter takes a deep breath, unevenly despite his efforts, feeling embarrassment waving hot and uncomfortable under his skin. He quickly let go of the jeans. “No, it's fine. You, you don't have to. Just… I'm almost at my school and— and I don't wanna be rude, but…”

_“Are you asking me to shut up?”_

Peter feels his stomach becoming ice-cold.

“No! No, that’s not what I meant. I- I'm just saying, I might not answer 'cause there'll be a lot of people and—”

_“Kid,” _T.O.N.Y. cuts through his stammers like a hot knife through butter, neutrality replaced by a firm sort of tranquility. “_Relax. I was just messing with you. I'm the one who told you to be careful while talking with me, remember? Don´t worry about it.”_

Peter’s nose flares as he sucks in a deep breath and lets it out in a rush that slumps his shoulders, dropping his head on his hands. “You're kind of mean,” he complains, but cannot generate the appropriate amount of intent to it to have any heat behind.

_“Eh, I prefer calling it ‘colorful personality’.” _

-

Peter walks down the hallway, backpack strap in his tight grip. The usual nervousness arises like a squeeze at the bottom of his stomach and he keeps his head down, eyes on the floor ahead. He counts the right number of lockers after the pot without a plant until he reaches his and begins the usual routine of trying to unravel the blurred numbers of the lock as quickly as possible. Lingering in one place so public for too long is never a good idea.

_“You are giving me a secondhand headache, kid.”_

Peter jolts and instinctively cast a look around – he can't help it, with the way the AI sounds like it's standing next to him. He quickly forces himself to look forward again, biting his lip against the urge to respond bubbling up his throat.

_“What´s with all the squinting?”_

Peter blinks. Does it can see- well, ‘see’ his face? “I… I can't see very well,” he whispers after glancing around a second time, to make sure no one is looking. Before he can ask, though, T.O.N.Y. continues.

_“So why aren´t you using your glasses? Or contact lens?”_

Heat rises in his face, a feeling of shame sinking into his stomach like acid. He does not immediately reply and focuses on turning the correct sequence of numbers. When he finally opens the lock, as he lets the backpack slip from his shoulder, he ducks behind the metal door with one hand holding it in place. He finally manages to unglue his tongue enough to say something while picking up his things, trying his best to sound normal. "I don't have neither."

There is a pause while Peter puts the books in the backpack.

“_I'm going out on a metaphorical limb here, but I thought that was something your family should provide for you_.” It's not a question.

Peter feels himself growing flustered and defensive. “Well- yeah, I… I guess, but-…”

“_But?_”

“Look, I'm fine without them, okay? You don't have to- to-…” He trails off, struggling.

T.O.N.Y. hums. _“You keep working on what I don´t have to do. __In the meanwhile, here.”_

A horizontal row of bluish circles appears in front of him and Peter freezes. The most prominent one narrows, expands, and whirls before rotating out of his view like someone scrolling up on a screen; the next circle does the same; the next; and the next. In a sequence so fast Peter barely has time to start trying to get confused, as suddenly as the row of circles appeared, they are gone. The world seems to shudder like a mirage… then the colorful blur that is his notebooks and school books comes into perfect focus.

His jaw drops.

“_Better?_” T.O.N.Y. sounds casually smug.

Peter shoves the rest of the books inside his backpack and slams shuts the locker, earning a few surprised and dirty glances. But for the first time in months, Peter barely pays attention to any of it and simply scrambles quickly towards the closest bathroom, not running at full speed out of extraordinary self-control exercised at the last second. He still smacks against the door and skates inside – luckily empty. A glance through the stalls and he turns to the mirrors.

His perfectly shocked reflection looks back at him.

“How did you do that?!”

“_Bio-scanners and custom adjustment system_,” T.O.N.Y. says like it's no big deal. “_I took a scan of your retina and adjusted the glasses to correct your astigmatism and myopia._”

It's, in Peter's book, a _pretty_ big deal.

“_Dude!_” he whispers shrilly, grabbing his own hair. “That's, like, so freaking cool!”

“_I know_.”

Peter opens his mouth to ask what else it can do but a loud, high-pitched sound echoes across the bathroom and interrupts him – the bell. And he is forced to swallow his questions. Right. School. He has... classes to go. Which usually is the highlight of his day and he basically forgot about it. He takes a deep breath, holds the air inside his chest until the strange electricity under his skin calms down, seems less likely to numb his teeth and the tip of his fingers. It doesn't help at all, with him still feeling ready to skip instead of walking when he comes out of the bathroom, with only his sense of personal self-preservation keeping his feet firmly on the floor.

-

Despite what Peter said— _asked for_, he himself has to swallow back the millions of questions surging up his throat at every opportunity that comes up to talk, trying to restrain himself with considerable effort. Really. Well, more or less. He makes a considerable effort not to start chattering with seemingly nothing in the middle of crowded places. On the other hand, any intention he had that morning of paying attention in class leaves no shadows on being vaporized, as Peter becomes physically unable to direct his focus to anything other than the sunglasses hanging from his nose (which no one asks him to remove. Only after he takes a second glance at a mirror that he realizes the lens are no longer blue but rather looking like normal transparent glass. _Smart electrochromic polymer embedded lenses_, was T.O.N.Y.’s answer. Which it’s, like, _so damn cool_ Peter almost says it out loud).

He sits through his classes mechanically, notebook open on the table and pencil in hand, but that's how far he goes.

Everything he read about artificial intelligence is whipping over his head and making random strikes with any train of thought, and every strike bubble up inquiries with a frantic urgency to get out of his mouth because an _honest-to-god_ AGI is perched on his nose and talking with him. Like, _a lot_. In T.O.N.Y.’s favor, it avoids questions or any other type of sentence that would require Peter to answer in some capacity – but other than that, T.O.N.Y. comments on everything and everyone in an almost constant flow of words. The AI seems to enjoy it (and to think about it, the ‘_enjoy it_’, derails him on another tangent of questions with another absolute need for answers that almost rips him off the chair towards the closest bathroom more than once). And it doesn't help it seems to think it's cool to drop absurd surprises on Peter without a ‘hey’ or any sort of warning.

Peter knees his desk when, abruptly, the chalk scribbles on the blackboard became highlighted and turned into something more readable. _“You and your squinting.” _T.O.N.Y. complained as an explanation after Peter tore a hole into his notebook in a hurry to scrawl how _the hell it had done it_ – and learned image enhancement is an automatic feature of the glasses. _“Custom adjustment system, as I said.” _And then it spent the rest of the American history class demonstrating the extent of this feature – meaning Peter learned the exact number of stains on the floor and cracks on the ceiling, as well what some of the other students were writing on their notebooks –, alongside a lengthy comment on the teacher's ability to, quote, “offensively simplify” the subject being taught.

In the end, it ended up being the only class in which Peter took serious notes – not from the teacher, but rather from T.O.N.Y. after the AI got so revolted it started to overlap the lecture with its own presentation about the subject, with images and videos, and hundreds of times more interesting than anything else Peter been through since he came here.

-

“Does that mean you're from Stark Industries, then?”

_“This again?”_

The corner of his mouth twitches, wanting to bend upwards when he hears the AI's peeved tone. He arranges the tray on his lap and leans against the emergency stair wall, where he technically isn’t allowed, be either at lunchtime or ever. T.O.N.Y. made a brief comment on how this was different from what it thought it would be like to be in school, but aside from explaining how rarely its previsions end up wrong, the AI says nothing about Peter coming here. Or about his quick escape from the cafeteria after getting food.

Peter is extremely grateful for that. A feeling enfolded around a familiar burn of shame that this is his life.

He avoids thinking about it.

“You said something about your full name last time. Didn´t you?” Peter continues. “Tony… Stark?” He's pretty sure that was it. It's not exactly a common name.

The AI huffs. _“I´m allowed to have a full name.”_

It´s not a ‘yes’ nor a ‘no’ and Peter decides to return the favor and not to push.

“Full name?”

_“Anthony M. Stark.”_

He blinks. “What the M stands for?”

_“Melissa.”_

A laugh startles out of him. “It _does_ not.”

_“Mona-Lisa.”_

“You’re just messing with me.”

"_Of course_.” T.O.N.Y.’s tone is purposely snotty, which makes him smile.

“Hey, so, I was wondering,” he starts once he finishes eating, tapping the plastic fork against the tray. “What did you mean by the glasses being technically mine?” A question that has been looping inside his head for a few hours now. Whether the glasses are a Stark product or not, if what T.O.N.Y. is saying is true and Peter is currently in possession of the world's first AGI (a thought that fills him with both uncontrollable awe and profound terror), then it is probably worth his weight in gold. Maybe more. Probably more. Peter doesn't know the equivalent of gold to dollars, so it might not be the best comparison.

He would feel more comfortable holding gold, to tell the truth.

_“I mean that they are yours. Don’t see what’s not to understand.”_

“Well, I don’t remember getting one of the most advanced, expensive technology in the world for Christmas.” It is not as if he were the heir of any inheritance. He's sure of that. And he doesn't meant to sound as if he’s complaining because he’s _not_, but... it’s weird. Right? People don’t just stumble into these things on their own. Much less an orphan kid with nothing to his name.

_“Well, if you want to be accurate, the Space Station beats me by a few million. But since it technically isn´t _on _the Earth and I _do_ have access to the Space Station and could arguably be considered part of it, I´m indeed the most expensive thing in the world.”_

Blindsided, it´s a morbid curiosity that drives him to ask, “How much do you cost?”

_“Hmm… $67.4 million?”_

“… what.”

_“Of course, the value changes from time to time.”_ Something in its tone of voice implies a shrug if a virtual being were capable of doing so. _“I don’t really pay attention to the boring stuff.”_

The sentence ‘$67.4 million’ just whirl like a wheel on the mud inside his head. $67.4 million. That doesn´t even sound like a real number. He has a $67.4 million glasses casually perched on his nose. _$67.4 million—_it could probably fill an entire classroom up to the ceiling. Even in 100 dollars bills. Probably more than one classroom. Fuck, does even _exist_ 67.4-million-dollar bills in the world?

Air leaves him in a wheeze.

_“Kiddo?”_

“Dude, I´m freaking _out_.”

_“Because of the money? C’mon, don’t be shallow.”_

“A _shit-ton_ of money—”

_“Language.”_

“—in the form of a pair of glasses I could _step_ on by mistake. Did you just say ‘language’?” Peter asks, awed.

“_I´m family-friendly. Okay, no, I´m bullshitting you. Your face, oh god.”_

T.O.N.Y. laughs and it really does sounds… just like a normal person. Peter can even visualize the chest quake that would produce such a sound, deeper than its normal and less augmented with a constant influx of words – just a spill of breath, even though coming from something that does not have the ability to lose breath. There’s a tingle on the tip of his fingers at this mental picture and Peter feels something warm blooming under his skin. It takes a moment for him to recognize this feeling for what it’s.

_Pleasure._

Because… he made someone laugh. Because someone is laughing at him but it’s not cruel.

He bites his lips and pushes the tray onto the floor. Folds his legs against his chest, resting his crossed his arms over the knees. “You didn’t answer my question,” he accuses, voice muffled on his arms. His face feels hot and he’s terribly embarrassed.

T.O.N.Y. hums, amusement still lingering in his voice. “_I fairly sure I did.”_

“It didn’t make any sense,” he protests. “You said that simply talking to you breaks the law.”

_“That’s because I was founded by the government. Which means I´m a top-secret technology. Otherwise—”_

Peter jerks. “Wait, what?”

T.O.N.Y. pauses. Then makes a little ‘huh’. _“I didn’t meat to tell you that,”_ it confesses, and yet despite its words, it sounds utterly undisturbed. _“Ah, well, I never was great with keeping secrets anyway.”_

He does not share the sentiment.

A feeling of almost betrayal surges through him, killing the warmth of before. He stands up suddenly. “I thought you said the government was not involved in this!”

_“I said they had nothing to do with me sending the glasses to you. Never said anything about myself.”_

Which—is truth, he realizes to his great consternation. Still. _Still_. Peter swallows, closing his hands into fists. His head is reeling. “If that´s true, then those are-… are governmental propriety,” he says, voice faltering. “Like, for real. I could be arrested for stealing governmental propriety.”

_“You didn’t steal anything. I chose to send you the glasses. Any fault or blame it’s on me. Besides, the glasses were just gathering dust in some corner since they were made. No one will miss them.”_

Because T.O.N.Y. is capable of making choices. Because it's not just a complex program mimicking and emoting human thinking and cognition – or at least that's what it proclaimed. Peter finally takes note of a distant comprehension, a thought he has been forcing to the back of his head since this morning: that he has _no reason_ to believe that. That it all being a lie might not make sense – since why anyone would go to such lengths of displaying such outrageous tech, just to trick a 14-year-old kid? – but does not automatically means it’s the truth. Because now, in this moment of sudden and cold rationality, he realizes he doesn’t have any proof of T.O.N.Y.’s claims. About the car accident. About wanting to help him. About what it is. As far as he knows, it could all be fabricated. Plain lies with unknown motives, perhaps someone trying to rope him into some illegal scheme. So, the safest option would be to go to a police station and explain that he received the glasses by mistake, and pray to no be arrested for holding governmental propriety.

Yet Peter doesn’t move to go to the principal's office or anything like that.

His throat feels dry and sore; hoarse from talking so much, the most talking he did in months. Because it's fun to talk to T.O.N.Y., who despite everything seems genuinely to like talking to Peter.

And Peter suddenly realizes with a selfish intensity that he _wants_ to believe in T.O.N.Y.

Believe that it is a real AI; that it decided to help him on the worst day of his life for no other reason than Peter himself; that it tried to contact him multiple times in the past few months and when this failed, decided to send him a cutting-edge government technology just so they could _talk_. Technology that no one would miss. That wouldn't bring any problems.

Peter doesn't want to give this up. Even if it is illegal or wrong.

Today was the first day in months that he didn't feel miserable and the prospect of going back to that—just the thought twists dread in his chest.

He clutches his hands, fingernails digging into his skin. “I-… if, if no one will miss them,” he tries. Has to stop, the words tasting bad.

_“No one will.”_ T.O.N.Y. sounds gentle, voice quieter than normal. _“You have my word, Peter.”_

_Thief._

Peter shuts his eyes and just nods, not trusting the strange knot in his throat.

When the bell rings, he takes the tray and goes back into the building and T.O.N.Y. he goes back on commenting on everything as if nothing had happened – and the string of incessant one-sided conversation gradually unravels the tension between Peter's shoulder blades, until he finally manages to relax once again, even if the bad taste remains in his mouth for the rest of the classes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *waves* hi
> 
> [Bone conduction speakers](https://www.soundguys.com/bone-conduction-headphones-20580/)


End file.
